Yeah, that was easily the worst hearthstone expansion of all time for the health of the game.
Hyper linear decks with no interaction beyond “finish your quest first.”
Quest mage, shaman, and warlock finished their quests on 6 or 7, and won the game the turn after. After those got nerfed, pirate warrior got smite and took the spot, and quest hunter took off… Yes, quest priest was bad until those quests all got made unplayably bad.
The entire meta was “finish quest, burn face” for that entire expansion.
Source? I recall lots of players and lots of interest in that meta.
I know the loud mouth control purists on reddit howled to the moon like someone had their favorite appendage in a vise, but lots of normal people had lots of fun.
Were all quickly nerfed. Shaman was flat broken… and fun, lol.
I love that pirate warrior was too slow in that meta, lol.
And? It’s fine to have different metas in standard.
It can’t just be control priest and miracle rogue, despite what top 1k thinks the game should be.
It’s the best single target healing. This thing in Hunter with the 1 mana spell and no other buffs could be a 27 heal. That’s absurd.
We’re not even talking bananas, weapon buff, nothing. Hound + 1 mana spell is better healing than anything anybody has in the game, even DK. DK can’t heal a potential 27 healing with a 7 mana combo.
Oh, yeah, AaBJ is a card that never, ever should have been made.
That card is going to need to be nerfed to nearly unplayability like sinful brand was, but without the delay because the cards to abuse it already exist.
Literally no one is happy when control priest is the best deck. No one advocates for control priest to be best, ever.
Any time it’s good is a highlight of all of the things you shouldn’t give a control deck (infinite value engines, auto-win combos, and 95% removal/card generation).
People generally prefer miracle rogue styles to be best when played at top 1k skills, but not best anywhere else (else it’s unbeatable at top skills).
Variety in a meta is good…
Quest decks killed deck variety entirely, because the questlines were a paint by numbers way to build a deck for easy wins, which is why ALL of the early playable ones got nerfed, and then priests started to show up post rotation when none of the others still really had enough support to function.
Those questlines were popular, but they were a bigger design mistake than Genn/Baku. (And they are the majority of the reason twist failed as a format in the first months)
This is true, and the biggest thing people never quite understand is that Control Priest is only ever really good as a top deck when it’s actively fighting to kill off oppressive decks. And then as soon as it does, Control Priest gets shoved back down to Tier 3.
Look at the last several weeks.
Control Priest was garbage.
Then it was approaching greatness.
Next week, back to garbage.
Slowly climbing back up next week.
Back down to Tier 3.
Control Priest is like THE deck that constantly tries to stabilize the meta. No other deck goes from Tier 1, to Tier 3, back to Tier 1 and back to Tier 3 like it does.
Several metas ago it was the #1 deck because it countered the Rogue deck like 50% of people were playing. The Rogue deck got nerfed and suddenly Control Priest was Tier 4.
The last time I had a well rounded priest deck was back when everyone thought that tickatus lock auto beat it…
Once I figured out how to have a winning matchup against that deck (steal galakrond with illicia and don’t play draw cards), it was smooth sailing for most of my 1k priest wins.
Thankfully there were no mirrors at that time because of tickatus lock
You know, ever since Legion in WoW, this statement has been true in WoW as well. Classes like Shamans, Priests, and Druids are given some slow, clunky, long cast time, high mana cost, low effectiveness healing spell (at least in their dps classes) and absolutely no healing to name outside of it. Meanwhile, classes like Warriors, Demon Hunters, Death Knights, etc. are healing massive amounts without it being clunky.
I dunno if they kept it that way in WoW today, but yeah, healing on non-healing classes feels broken.
Cleave damage does not count as damage done by the minion attack. That would be a good change if necessary.
It is an effect and as such it’s not “dealt by the attack”.
That would reduce the dumb interations with AABJ and cleave.
While about the healing…
I not see that big difference in a word where you can’t overheal your hero and keep that health.
Anything around 9/10 already will bring you back to full health or near it most of the time.
If anything my problem with hollow hound is that it punishes people for having a board. Not because it clears it but because it gets lifesteal from all 3.
It’s ok to throw them a bone every once in awhile. But to just straight up give them the best is absurd.
How many Rush minions does Priest have? Zero. Nor should Priests expect any. They don’t need minion removal help.
But imagine if suddenly Priest got not only the best rush minion in the game, but it was also a beast that did something Hunters could only dream of doing. It would be dumb.
Yet here we are.
Next thing you know, Priest is gonna be an armor class and Warrior is gonna be healing.
It thematically makes sense too. Discipline Priest, and it’s go to spell power word shield, have been a staple of WoW since day 1. The need to purge their shields has always been a necessary component in breaking past a disc priest’s health pool. You know, like Blood DK right now.
Thematically it would make sense for Priests to give minions, and their hero, temporary health. Like a 2 turn +5 max HP kind of thing would totally make sense for them.
That wasn’t just an expansion. That was the game from the time they went in until they got rotated out. Sure some went away(because of severe nerfs) but Quest Hunter, Priest and DH were like a bad rash that stuck around until they rotated.
The quests dictated metas all through their life in Standard. They also put severe constraints on the designers(which they actively acknowledged was a bad idea).
Quests overall created continuing parasitic decks that were bad for the game and bad for card creativity. They are the one card type i hope never comes back into the game again.
The top 1k constantly forces control priest and miracle rogue. If either deck is tangentially viable, it’s played everywhere in top 1k. There are clear choices that are preferences for that group that are unrelated to any true balance issues.
We already had this discussion. Lots of things are only applicable to the pocket meta at top 1k.
This part is true, so I put the period where it belongs. The rest of it isn’t relevant.
Yet rogue and control priest somehow always find their way at top 1k.
No, it killed your preference, not variety as some absolute.
It’s best when it’s in a well defined and narrow meta band and it can be tailored to that band, targeting a couple decks and protecting a fair match up with a couple more.
I think this is very true at the top levels where everyone loves it. I think it’s very much a tangential also ran below legend in most healthy metas.
Priest doesn’t have a good enough win rate to be that common at top legend. At best it carves out a small niche to get up to tier 2 ish for a bit before the meta stomps it back out.
It’s almost never a top played deck.
It just shows up there because it is easy to build a priest deck to hard counter 1 or two things well. It almost never has a good matchup spread for a wider meta.
Rogue does so because the class can do bonkers things when played well. If it couldn’t, it wouldn’t be showing up.
Preference doesn’t make decks stronger. Forcibly playing them doesn’t make the rest of the field bend to give them playable matchup spreads.
People play priest all across the ranks. It just usually only does well at top legend, where people know how and why they are using the deck for the particular meta.
At this exact moment in the top of the Ladder Control Priest is THE #1 deck. The only thing keeping it from dominating the entire ladder is play skill.
It was trending that way until druid got nerfed, then dropped back to like, tier 4 by Sunday (based on the VS podcast anyway). I can’t imagine it turned around that fast back to “best deck” category. It’s too easy to counter.
Eh, going to disagree here. The play rate of it is usually pretty related to how well it’s doing. Yes, it does sometimes get played above the rates that make sense for a bit, but it’s not like it’s a huge effect.
You are suuuuper overblowing how impactful that is.
Even with the last VS report, where priest was coming down from being the “best deck in the meta,” it was only a 10.5% play rate at top legend, compared to 8.8% at diamond.
So it’s slightly more popular up there…
It’s not like it reaches top 3 play rates if the power isn’t there to justify it.
So uh, its a long topic, and there sure has been a lot of talk of data in here, but um…
Look, I played non-renethal hound hunter all this month, and I’m at about 1k legend. All I’ve been fighting since I hit legend this month:
Other hound hunters (usually renethal)
Enrage Warrior
Control Priest
Relic DH
Mages
That’s it. Every other deck may as well be irrelevant right now. Paladins are easy wins if they can’t weapon your face down, DK players still havent hit legend, Warlocks are a meme, Shamans are a meme, and Rogues are a meme.
Hollow Hound really did enable hunters to do whatever they want. Most classes can’t deal with it. If you watch any youtubers showing off their fun decks, they conveniently omit all hunter match ups.